by Aya DeAniege
I was embarrassed and conflicted as to what to do. I had spent the past five months with Nathaniel, mainly enjoying his company. The bit of sex that we had was brilliant, but it was nowhere near as much as I expected, let alone how much I had hoped for when we had first begun to dabble.
Mr. Wrightworth had been the rock of stability I needed during the trial. Always there, always being the one to say no, to leave me behind when the trial became too much for me.
His offer had surprised me, but then he had always been stoic about his desires. I still couldn't say what drove the man to do anything at all.
As we ate. Likely we disappointed the reporters around us. Nathaniel and Mr. Wrightworth talked about the trial, but only about the closing arguments, which the reporters had been there for, and actual verbatim. They asked one another how a certain sentence went, the tone of voice for that one word. Neither of them asked the other what he thought the outcome would be. It had to be one of the driest conversations we had had over lunch in the entirety of the trial.
Though it did occur to me that the reporters were hoping to get some reaction from them. Or to be able to say that they laughed cheerily, however, no such reaction was given.
When they bored of talking about the closing arguments, they talked a little about the weather and the food. However, even that was dry in and of itself. They expressed no joy, yet no sadness at the trial possibly concluding soon.
Nicole made a comment on how I wasn't drinking wine.
I swear I heard a flurry of pen on paper.
She did it on purpose. There would be headlines questioning whether or not I was pregnant and whether the Program's IUD system was truly flawless as they claimed. But at least then they had something to talk about. Something besides the trial and the deliberation.
After lunch, Mr. Wrightworth took me to his vehicle, to drive me home. Neither of the men questioned this arrangement. Neither did I.
At least, not until I was in the car.
Then I questioned why I was in Mr. Wrightworth's vehicle only because he was there to support me. At that moment, there wasn't anything to support. I was an emotional husk. My mood was much like the conversation over lunch. Boring, drab, and steadily in the centre, never swinging to either joyful or sad.
I simply existed. So my mind found the only puzzle that I could contemplate in the meantime.
What Mr. Wrightworth and Nathaniel had asked at lunchtime. And why, why had Mr. Wrightworth made such an offering when we hadn't so much as kissed in the previous six months? Had I made that much of an impression on him? That he thought about me for so long afterward?
That he was willing to explore the murky waters of sexuality for me?
“I don't know what to do,” I said.
“You should choose Nathaniel, it's the safe thing to do,” Mr. Wrightworth said. “Though, now that I say that out loud, it sounds like an insult. It's not, Darling. Nathaniel can look after you.”
“Then why offer the key?” I asked.
“Because,” he hesitated as he pulled to a stop at a light, then sighed and looked at me.
He had taken to driving his vehicle to and from the trial when one of the reporters claimed to have interviewed his driver. Of course, they hadn't spoken with his actual driver, but he didn't want to risk word getting out. Our conversations were supposed to be private, which was why we had them in the vehicle.
No one needed to hear me hysterically wanting the world to kill itself.
“If you took the key, yes. Absolutely and to everything, yes. Move in, nest, put your stuffed animal in my bed again, and leave your underwear hanging out of the dresser drawer."
“Two times and you think I'll do it forever,” I grumbled.
“But deep down I wonder... what's going to happen six months or a year from now? Two years from now, or three? At my heart, I'm a sadist and a gay man. You're the only woman I'd consider sleeping with twice.”
“Or sixteen times?”
“You counted?”
“Yes, the light is green.”
The car started moving as Mr. Wrightworth shook his head.
“I worry that I will let you down,” he said finally. “I worry that one day you may find me in bed with a man, that you might wake up when you're forty and regret being with me instead of Nathaniel. We both love you, but we love you in different ways and...” he sighed. “And I'm afraid that he loves you more than he does me, and that will be the wedge that drives us apart.”
“There's no way he loves me more than he loves you. And that's what worries me. No matter where you go or what you do after the contract is over, he'll still love you. Because you made him love you.”
“And you didn't,” Mr. Wrightworth said. “Nathaniel didn't have to be made to trust you or to see your worth. He just loves you unconditionally. He will do things for you that he would never do for me.”
“Do you mean sex?”
“I mean sex, yes,” Mr. Wrightworth said with a nod.
“He has sex with me because I'm a woman,” I said. “If you were a woman he'd still be with you.”
“I also mean taking you back, risking both our lives to keep you, paying millions to get you emancipated, buying out his business so he could live in the open, submitting himself to Mayfair so that his father would drop the civil case against the Program, which would have bankrupted us, by the way.
“Nathaniel would conquer the world, if only you asked it of him. So, yes, I would advise you to take the ring.”
“Because you wouldn't do those things for me?”
“I would, to start. That's the problem. I can't make long term promises, Isabella. I'm a broken man, and I know it. I don't trust who I will become, but I trust the man that Nathaniel has become."
“He became that man because of you.”
“No, no, never think that, Darling. Nathaniel became the man he had to be, because of you, not because of me. Never because of me. I just kept him sane long enough to find you. You did the rest."
Chapter Twenty
Four days later, we were called back to court.
Sometimes I wonder about the jury, about the length of their deliberation. The timing was just too perfect for me to ever believe that they didn't just up and come to a consensus that day to announce their decision that day. They knew what day it was. It had been discussed several times during the trial, even by the prosecutor in his closing comments.
I've always wondered if they knew the answer almost immediately but held out for that last day of the contract. Jury deliberation is filmed but is never made part of the public record. For the protection of their votes.
All I know for certain was that after a review, they were found not to be breaking any laws.
Nathaniel and Mr. Wrightworth's contract was to end at ten in the morning that day. I knew the timing because I had read the contract at the Program building. As far as I know, no one besides the four of us, Mr. Wrightworth, Albert, Nathaniel, and I, knew what time the contract was supposed to end at. I think most assumed it ended at the stroke of midnight.
At ten in the morning, no bells or whistles went off. They were both sitting in the courtroom at the time, overhearing the decision of the jury without making a sound. No eye contact was made, no movement. Their full attention was on the front of the courtroom, waiting for the jury to enter.
The two men were stoic. So calm that I wondered if Nathaniel had checked out like he did when serving Mr. Wrightworth and Mayfair. As for Mr. Wrightworth, well, I've never seen him so still.
I suppose you could say that I had noticed a change in their behaviours, but couldn't say what that change was, not until after the fact. When I finally did notice, I was a little disappointed, I must say, that neither of them was jumping for joy.
Perhaps it was a shock to their systems. Being free after eight years, they could have been spinning their wheels, so to speak, and trying to right their new image of the world.
For them, picking what to wear to the del
iberation was simple. The same thing as usual.
Neither man looked drab or boring, but I always envied their limited wardrobe. I couldn't pull off so few looks for such a long time.
For myself, choosing what to wear took a great deal of time. Though in the end, I had been choosing what to wear for the day, not the verdict.
I wore one of those 50's dresses that Nathaniel liked so much. The dress I had chosen had a wide blue belt and a lighter blue floral print all down it. It was cheery and had offset my dreary mood of the morning. All morning I had a sense of impending doom as I got ready to go to the courthouse.
Let me just be clear, we didn't expect the jury back that day. We expected to spend the day at the courthouse waiting for the jury, just as we had the previous three days. At no point was there any hint that the deliberations would be completed. There were a lot of charges to go over. Each one had to be carefully considered, the evidence reviewed, every angle considered. With how many charges were laid on Albert, there just didn't seem to be a way that all could be reviewed in only four days.
I never intended to wear that dress to an actual hearing. If I had thought the deliberations would be completed, I would have packed a dress to take with me, and changed afterward.
A cheery dress to court the day that the jury announced their verdict seemed either hopeful or disrespectful. Either way, it wasn't a light that I wanted to be cast on myself during the trial. Pictures of me in that dress, oh, I looked lovely. There was no doubt about how lovely the dress was.
However, after arriving, there hadn't been time to go out and get another dress. It was either attend in the floral patterned, 1950's style dress or not attend at all.
I chose to attend despite my attire.
I suppose there was a third option, and I would have enjoyed that, but I don't think Nathaniel would have let me enter the courtroom in the nude.
I wore it to court because afterward we were going to go to dinner to celebrate Nathaniel and Mr. Wrightworth's new found freedom. I had known the pair of them for just over a year and a half. Birthdays had come and gone, births of new nieces and nephews had occurred in the slums. It didn't seem odd to me that the one day we were celebrating was the end of a contract.
The end of Nathaniel's contract.
I hadn't been counting my own, only shooting for the end of the trial, for the end of Nathaniel's contract.
It was only because we were going to dinner that I happened to be dressed up that day. I had also spent the time putting my hair up with jewelled pins. I even had a purse and had lipstick in the purse to add on the way to the restaurant.
Nathaniel and Mr. Wrightworth were both wearing suits, as they normally did.
Unlike other days, we went to the courthouse in one vehicle instead of two. On the way into the courthouse, Nathaniel had handed Mr. Wrightworth a small plastic case. The case gave Mr. Wrightworth pause. There was a small intake of breath and even a little red to his cheeks.
Mr. Wrightworth took the case and slipped it into an inside pocket. He patted the pocket with a small smile but didn't say anything to me as to what was in the case.
Neither of the men had asked about my decision. The closest to asking was when Nathaniel, that morning before leaving his estate, said to me that if I needed more time, I could take it. Neither would push me into a decision. They wanted me to be comfortable with it.
Like all things, consent was their first concern. Everything else could come later.
Even as I sat in the courtroom, I debated.
Mr. Wrightworth or Nathaniel.
Would I ever be able to call him by his given name?
Dismissing right off the bat the whole debate about caring for me financially was simple. Both could provide for me the sort of life I might want, though both lives would be different. I wasn't exactly accustomed to living Nathaniel's lifestyle, and I didn't think I ever would be. I would never want for furs or expensive jewelry. The latest fashion didn't matter, not to me anyhow.
I wanted books and old time cinema, both cheap things in our world. Both could be provided by either option.
Nathaniel had been there, and there was no denying that walking into the same room as the man was enough to make me bite my lip. The sparks were obvious, but we'd been having troubles. Mainly troubles that revolved around the trial, we'd both settle down once it was done and dealt with, once our lives were our own again. He could touch me in ways I never thought I'd be touched.
He had purchased the contract for me even to meet me, but he had also insisted that I better myself. He had hired tutors for me, and trainers had respected my boundaries—even if he had crossed the threshold into my bedroom a couple of times.
When it came to sex, the pair of us meshed so well together. Certainly, we had our problems as we grew and learned new things, and I was not smooth as a Domme yet.
When I made a mistake, he would laugh and make a joke of it. When I was sad, he would be there but quietly. We had moments that couples were supposed to have, and we fought sometimes and other times we would physically fight, but he was refining my skills each time. Teaching me as he was allowing me to beat on a man.
Something that I hadn't realized I needed until he had baited me into attacking him. Just tying him up wasn't enough, I needed to feel like I could take on a man and win. Otherwise, I felt insecure, like I might be plucked up and spirited away at any moment.
He gave me that. Without asking about it, without wondering out loud if that was what I needed, he knew. Perhaps he had gone through something similar. Maybe he had wished he could take on his abusers. Or maybe he had simply made the connection after he had stopped hiring male trainers for me when I didn't bruise the woman he finally brought in to teach me self-defense.
It probably wasn't difficult to pick up on, but volunteering to be that sparring partner couldn't have been easy.
You do things wrong, to give him a reason to hurt you.
That was what I had been told about serving by a fellow sub at the church. Nathaniel had something very similar, as did Mr. Wrightworth. Sometimes submitting wasn't about kneeling and taking a beating, sometimes it was about baiting them, giving them a reason to do what they wanted to do to you.
Then there was all the rest with Nathaniel. How he introduced me to reading once more, and cinema. How he insisted on showing me new things, and how everything he showed me seemed so fascinating. I loved the movies we watched and the books he suggested I read. He knew just what I'd be interested in, even before I expressed interest in it.
Perhaps at that time in my life, it was easy to read my desires on my face. Or maybe our interests were simply that close in nature. At that point I didn't know, how could I have known when there was still so much in the world for me to explore and play with?
“Darling,” Mr. Wrightworth whispered, tugging me to my feet.
I had been so distracted I missed the call to rise. Once on my feet, I wavered, feeling as if I weren't quite in the courtroom, but a million miles away.
“Did you give her something to keep her calm?” someone whispered to Mr. Wrightworth.
“No,” he responded, arm wrapping around me firmly to keep me on my feet.
Albert was already in the courtroom, standing by the defense table and watching the jury enter. Each of the jurors took their seats as Albert stared at them. Unlike every other time, when he would talk to his defense attorney, or look over those gathered in the courtroom.
Anything but interact with the jurors or acknowledge they were there.
I think he was trying to figure out what the verdict was before it was read out loud. He was capable of reading body language, as most manipulators are. So he must have had some heads up as to what was going on.
Though, on their part, the jury appeared to simply be people. Nothing about their actions gave away what they were thinking. None of them looked at Albert. They watched the door where the judge would enter once they were seated. As the door opened for the judge, Albert di
d not look away from the jury, not until his attorney touched him on the shoulder.
He was reluctant to look away, and for a moment I thought I saw fear on his face.
I hope he's sweating bullets.
After the judge was announced, we sat, but Mr. Wrightworth's arm remained locked around me. I was trembling my whole length and couldn't focus on what was being said.
Instead, I focused on Mr. Wrightworth.
The man had been there for the whole trial, for the months of healing and recuperating. He had held me when I cried because facing the world had just been too much. He was the one who had helped me back to my feet when I stumbled, who had shown patience when I had struggled with something as simple as turning my back on a man.
Mr. Wrightworth had taught me about the community at large. He had, over the months during the riots, told me how the community had been founded and even showed me the original rules they had drawn up. He had taught me everything about the lifestyle we chose to live. Anything at all, I could ask him, and he would answer.
Except for Nathaniel's safe word. To that question he always answered with a small smile, saying, “You already know that.”
Oh my God, it's his real name.
It hit me like a ton of bricks. Just sitting there in the middle of the courtroom, I finally understood why he would never say the word out loud and yet how I could have known it all at once. I hadn't asked about Nathaniel's safe word until after I had learned Mr. Wrightworth's real name.
There were still many secrets between Mr. Wrightworth and I. The same could be same of Nathaniel and me, but I felt that the ones Mr. Wrightworth hid were darker and more dangerous. I still had no idea where he had been born. His accent had so changed over his time working for the Program that he seemed to belong to no one geological area. I knew his father was dead, but that was the extent of my knowledge, and even that I had begun to question.
He had chosen a new name to protect his family from retribution. He believed he had changed so much that they wouldn't recognize him on sight, and they believed him dead. What had happened in his slum? What had happened to his family?